


the darkest night (before the dawn)

by AssumingMinds19



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Basically a really delightful way to create angst and mayhem, F/F, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Post S4 Finale, Spiderman inspired, angsty af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 15:49:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19976599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssumingMinds19/pseuds/AssumingMinds19
Summary: With the arrival of the Season 5 trailer (featuring some delightful Supercorp angst which made me very happy) I have been parroting on Tumblr about the deliciousness that is angst. And thus, I was asked what I think the confrontation scene between the two of them should look like.Thousands of words later, here's my answer.





	the darkest night (before the dawn)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this Tumblr prompt;
> 
> Ok, what if you had free reign to write the confrontation of Lena telling kara she knows, Queen of angst what would you do?
> 
> I went dark and deep on this one, people. You may not like the characters when it’s over.

* * *

This wasn’t what she wanted.

Lena watched with shuddered breath the news footage of the city below her tearing itself apart. Technology repurposed to hijack minds and amplify aggression. All in the pursuit of endless destruction and the desire to watch the world burn.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, the tight skin on the left side of her face pinched too at the action. Something that no amount of the super-soldier serum she created would ever be able to take away.

She hadn’t wanted to kill her. Lena had just wanted her to suffer the same way she had. To feel the sting of the slow knife of betrayal and grief as it slipped between her ribs and pierced her heart. Infecting her the same way it had infected Lena.

Kara didn’t know that Lena herself was the new superpower vigilante that was roaming the streets of National City. Throwing murderers out of second-story buildings, breaking their legs and holding white-collar criminals under the water of the river until they near drowned and transferred back all the money they had stolen.

Lena didn’t feel a need to be nice anymore. To be kind, or walk the line between who she pretended to be and who she really was. Not while she was wearing a mask. Not while she was nameless to the world. 

First, it had started out as a need to prove something to herself. That she was capable of taking back control of her own life. That she could stand away and separate from everyone that had lied to her and convinced her with insidious kindness that she was one of them. That she could be enough by herself.

And the more she had cemented herself as a creature of the night, the more she had withdrawn from the circle of liars she had once thought her friends. Back into her work, and trusting in what she knew was reliable. Technology and science during the day, and blood and violence in the night.

It had taught her things that she never knew even existed, being a vengeful predator. Cementing her belief in the inartistic wickedness of some people. How they would scrabble and climb on the corpses and gasping people beneath them, all so they could have more then they would ever need. How people could cause the pain of the innocent, and the deaths of the gentle until all that was left was a battered and subdued society, that truly believed all they were worth was to be treated like mindless cattle for the amusement of twisted minds and greedy people.

Kara had wondered why she had withdrawn from them all. She didn’t know that Lena knew, but Lena would watch the security tapes silently as Kara tried to enter the building and was rejected more than once. She watched as her phone rang and rang and Kara left dozens of messages that she never responded too. Sometimes, she would listen on the microphones she had implanted in Kara’s apartment as Kara and Alex talked about how worried they were for her. Wondering if Lex’s death had affected her so much, and what Kara could do to help.

Lena knew that Kara suspected her of killing her brother.

But Kara never knew that she was now the dark ghost of the city, the one that criminals whispered about in fear.

They hadn’t paid much attention to her at first, not realising that she wasn’t just some pesky nuisance that would go away at the first time of real danger. It wasn’t until she had worked her way up the ranks of criminals enough to finally bust an alien trading ring, that Supergirl had first found her.

Lena had waited with bated breath, her body, face and heartbeat hidden behind the microscopic lead she had lined her suit with as Kara perched herself in front of her on a rooftop and had the gall to ask her to reveal who she was. Wanting to know her motives and why she was doing what she was doing.

And an offer of friendship. The idea to work together for a common goal.

But Lena didn’t care for Kara’s soft handed and ineffective methods, and she revelled in the knowledge that for once it was _her_ keeping who she really was hidden. And Kara the one left in the dark about the reality of their confrontation. That the nameless, faceless, brutal, vindicator in front of her was, in fact, the same woman she had befriended and lied the entire time that they had known each other.

Pretending that she actually cared. And Lena had been the fool to start feeling things for Kara that she never thought she was capable of.

To feel like maybe they had a connection beyond mere friendship.

But it was all a lie.

And she wasn’t going to be used by anyone ever again. Not by her brother, not by her mother and not by Kara. Finding out that Lena was the National City Vigilante, and then keeping her under even tighter surveillance for the rest of her life. Always doubting who she was, and pretending that she never saw her as anything but a Luthor. 

So, not even bothering to reply, she had thrown a red sun bomb into Kara’s face and ran to hide in the night.

Things had only escalated from there, with Kara dogging her every step as Supergirl, but always half a step behind. Just the way Lena liked it. Finding the criminals tied up and bleeding, but never with Lena standing above them. Or the victims of a car wreck arrived safely on the pavement, Lena vanished from the scene. Sometimes she did find her, confront Lena with an increasingly frustrated attitude, but Lena never gave her a chance to get more than two words out before she evaded her once more.

_She had just wanted her to suffer the same way she had._

Cat and mouse, cat and mouse for months until the rumours and whispers began in the city. Of something dangerous, something new. A dark thing that infected the minds of all who came into contact with it and drove them mad. Amplifying the characteristics of its respondent, particularly their aggression. Making them viciously violent with no care for their own safety. Lena was so close to tracking down the source when she had been ambushed by the DEO. A ring of agents circling her and Kara hovering above them all. Telling her that they had to stop her to stop the violence.

That this wasn’t the way to be a true hero.

Like Lena had ever cared about that.

She wasn’t going to go down without a fight and had ripped through them with a flurry of broken bones and smashed faces. Kara unable to do anything beyond collapse to the ground in agony when Lena admitted a vaporous form of kryptonite into the air.

It was only once the squadron of agents lay bleeding and broken on the ground that Lena felt the loud bang of a bullet against her helmet, turning to see that it was Alex who had fired it. Standing a few feet away, the expression of Alex’s face cold and blank, Lena felt a sudden rage grip her. Knowing in her bones that this face was the truth. That even though Alex didn’t know who she was, this was the real way, this was how the lot of them _really_ saw Lena Luthor.

She had flown at her with a scream, overcome with it all. Grabbing her around the throat and slamming her back into the wall again and again until the concrete behind her cracked. Knowing that all Kara could do was crawl towards them both with a scream, begging her to stop before she killed her sister.

But Lena had no intention to kill Alex. She just wanted to watch her bleed and crack and break until she physically felt everything that Lena had felt emotionally. Broken and ruined.

Once she had dropped Alex, wheezing, to the floor, Lena had barely given the tearful Kara a final glance before she walked away, leaving the superhero on the ground in her own measure of pain.

Lena hoped the pain of it hurt far longer then it took for Alex’s wounds to heal.

Days passed, and Kara stopped calling. No doubt tending her sister's bedside as her priority to look after her overtook her need to keep Lena on a leash. But with each day, Lena felt a sort of charged tension in the air. Running electricity that promised something dark was coming. Something bad. Lena knew that it had something to do with this mysterious danger that was infecting people. Leaving them screaming in agony and rage, tied down to hospital beds until their hearts gave out.

The third night since the incident in the warehouse, thunder and lightning cracked outside across the sky as she sat in her penthouse, and she poured over all the information she had gathered trying to find a lead to somewhere useful. Her refined ears picked up on the sound of a soft landing on her balcony, a break in the flashing sky, Lena looked up to see Supergirl standing in her apartment living room and staring at her with a dark rage.

Lena had never related more to Kara in her life.

“Lena.”

A twisted feeling of satisfaction grew in her chest and on her face as she realised that Kara had finally figured out who she was.

“Kara.”

She had dreamt for months, wondering how she would confront Kara with the knowledge that she knew the truth. She had imagined every detail, every reaction. Both her’s and Kara’s. She had wondered if Kara would cry...if she would beg for forgiveness... if she would continue to try and pretend that she cared about her. That she hadn’t known the full extent and depth of Lena’s feelings and used them against her to care.

So she watched with cruel fascination at the expressions crossing Kara’s face in the moments after the reveal. The doubt, the fear, the regret before the final set of initial rage, amplified now, set in once more.

Lena had never seen her so angry.

She stood slowly, keeping her eyes on Kara with a smirk as she walked towards her liquor cabinet. Pouring herself a drink, she took a long sip before offering the bottle to Kara.

“Would you like a drink?” She drawled smartly, feeling every inch of revenge as if filled and grew in her heart. 

At Kara’s silence, Lena’s smirk widened.

“I’m sorry, what was I thinking?” She questioned, walking a few steps towards Kara now. 

“Bad for your public image, Ms Key to the City.”

Kara’s dark eyes were twisted with hate, and she stared at Lena with a snarl on her face.

“You hurt my sister,” she spat. “You almost killed her.”

Lena let out a cold laugh.

“No, I didn’t,” she responded cruelly, taking another long sip of her drink. “I knew she wouldn’t die.”

She liked the way fury looked on Kara’s face. Watching the unbridled fury in her eyes, recognising the reality of who Kara really was.

A sinner with a God complex.

“The duplicity and lies kept all of you standing far longer then you deserve,” Lena continued bitterly, moving even closer and watching as Kara’s fists clenched and her entire body trembled. “Tell me, did you laugh about it in secret? The big lie, the truth that you kept from me while you pretended to be my friends?”

She drank the last dregs, before throwing the glass to the ground with a shatter, stepping on the broken shards with a crunch as she stared at Kara, an inch away from her face.

“Or did you kid yourself,” she whispered, eyes flickering over her face. “Pretending it was ok… to stop it from keeping you up at night.”

Lena remembered she once thought that the blue of Kara’s eyes was the most beautiful thing in the world. That Kara’s eyes contained a world’s worth of caring and kindness. But they revealed the truth now, dark and filled almost with black ink in the shadows of Lena’s home.

“I cared about you,” Kara hissed through gritted teeth, her entire body betraying the falseness of her words. “I cared about you more than anyone else in my life. You were never anyone but Lena to me.”

She seemed to loom over Lena now, but Lena didn’t care.

A godly presence is only powerful so long as you believe in them.

“But you’re not that person anymore,” Kara spat, looking her over with disdain. “You’ve become everything that you swore never to be. A violent thug with a power complex.”

Lena snarled at the words, stung by the hypocrisy. And now all she could think of was revenge. She wanted to goad Kara. She wanted her to fight her. Lena wanted to hurt her in every way she possibly could.

“Maybe I am glad…” The words rolling off her tongue like honey. “Maybe I’m glad that I hurt her.”

Lena reached up a hand, hovering over Kara’s heart.

“I’m glad that I made you _really_ bleed the way you made me.”

Kara threw the first punch, the crack of it hitting Lena’s jaw throwing her back a few steps as Kara strode forward into her space. Before Lena could regain her footing, Kara backhanded her again, before pulling back for another punch. Hitting Lena’s chin, she finally felt her back slam into the wooden pillar behind. Regaining her sense in the split second that Kara took to launch towards her, ready to pin her no doubt, Lena unsheathed the Kryptonite dagger she’d attached to the armoured bracers underneath her shirt, stabbing it upwards when Kara reached her space and watching with satisfaction at the pained shock that crossed the other woman’s face.

Kara looked down at the green dagger with wide eyes as Lena’s face settled into a vicious snarl, fighting against the tight grip Kara had on her wrist as they struggled with each other. Battling their strengths and not gaining any ground. Kara finally managed the push her way, the dagger withdrawing and Lena ducked under the roundhouse punch that followed, realising the scythed blades on the back of her right arm, tearing through her shirt sleeve as she swung it viciously towards Kara’s face in retaliation.

Was the one to duck this time, her eyes wide, before lifting her leg and kicking Lena back hard into the wall with a solid hit to her chest. Lena slammed into it and heard the mirror behind her shatter. She let out a hiss, swinging her arm wildly again when Kara ran forward. They ducked and weaved in a wild dance before Kara stumbled and barely managed the grab Lena’s swinging arm before it hit her face. Kara’s hand vibrated with waning strength against the green blades, an inch from piercing her eyes, barely holding Lena’s arm at bay as Lena bore down with her full weight.

Kara managed to push her away suddenly, and Lena hit her quickly with a punch from her other hand, hoping to daze her as she swung her forearm once more. Kara hit the pillar herself, managing to drop just in time for Lena’s blades to instead embed themselves in the wood.

Lena tried to yank them out with a yell, but Kara sharp hand came down on her arm instead, leaving the bladed behind as they sheared off her bracer.

Kara knocked her back with a shove, moving quickly to press her advantage, but Lena was getting used to her pattern of fighting. Mimicking the kick Kara had used on her, Lena’s foot connected with Kara’s chest and sent her flying back across the room and into a table, cracking it in half.

Lena stalked forward with bared teeth as Kara clambered up in the wreck.

“How’d you like that, Girl of Steel?”

Kara stood up under the taunt, shaking herself loose as she raised her hands in a fighting stance.

“Is that all you got?”

They circled each other for a second before Lena aggressed once more. A flurry of punches and kicks, leaving each other both hard and bruised. Kara grabbed Lena’s shoulders suddenly, shoring her with all of her might and sending Lena crashing through the window. Rolling through the glass now shattered on her balcony, Lena lifted herself shakily to her knees, glaring at Kara’s smug face as she felt the prickle of a cut on her lip bleed down her chin.

Lena touched it with a hiss.

“Stings, doesn’t it?” Kara taunted.

Lena growled, gathering her strength.

“I protected you as Supergirl,” she spat with blood. “And now I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Kara shivered with fake fright.

“Oooh.”

Lena ran forward in a crouch, launching towards Kara midsection, hoping to knock her over so she could once again gain the advantage. But Kara grabbed her, plucking her almost out of her motion, and slammed her back into a wall. Lena managed to dodge the two punches sent her way, hearing the crack as they broke through the wall behind her, but Kara grabbed her by the lapels once more and threw her into the ceiling. Lena hit it with a sharp crack, her ears ringing she landed on the floor hard. Kara stared at her from across the room with hatred in her eyes. Lena scrambled to her feet, accepting that she was outmatched in this scenario. Without warning, she ran towards the full-length mirror in the hallway, listening as Kara super steps pounded behind her. Kara hit her back just when they were about to reach it, and they both flew forward. The mirror shattering as they rolled into the secret room Lena had built behind it.

Lena ran in the split second that Kara was thrown off guard, looking around her laboratory, the arsenal that lined her walls and the glass chamber that Lena inoculated herself with the gas version of her serum. She reached the racks of Kryptonite blades she had developed before Kara could, swinging them viciously in practised movements, hoping to get a hit. But despite her precision, and the kryptonite effect, Kara still managed to dodge a weave under her strikes. Backing away quickly as Lena swung her way forward. On a final side step, the force of her stroke caused Lena to accidentally hit a computer, sending a sharp burst of sparks and electricity through the room and blinding Lena temporarily.

Before she could recover, Lena felt herself being thrown into another wall, her head cracking against it and her neck snapping to the side so viciously, she felt the impact reverberate down her spine.

Lolling slightly, and gasping for breath, Lena managed to prop herself up weakly as Kara stalked toward her slowly. Looming over her like a dark spectre, Lena spat exhaustedly at Kara’s feet. 

“You going to kill me now?” Lena managed to hiss through the blood. “If you do, you’ll prove everything I know about you right.”

Kara scoffed, her eyes blank and cold.

“I’m done trying to convince you.”

Lena took a few shuddering breaths.

“You lied to me.” Her voice hoarse and cracking. “You betrayed me.”

There was a second of pause, but in that time, Lena saw what must have been every emotion in the world pass across Kara’s face before it finally settled on cruelty.

“Yes, I lied,” she admitted with a smug hint of pride. “I lied saying I cared about you.”

Even though it was what Lena had been telling herself for months now, the words still managed to knock the air left in her lungs out of her. Kara stared down at her reaction with amusement, seemingly delighted.

“The truth is,” Kara shrugged. “I just felt guilty. I felt guilty because you’re a pathetic, wounded creature with no spine beyond what I gave you.”

Lena’s chest started to heave, the words piercing her heart and she filled with a mountain of hurt, fury and a deep cavernous sense of loss. Realising now totally that Kara had given her a world built on lies, and had stolen it from her just as cruelly.

“Oh, look,” Kara crooned cruelly. “Are you going to cry now?”

Lena let out a roar, ready to launch to her feet, but Kara was prepared for her. Throwing her back to ground with a hard hit to her head.

Lena’s ears rang with it once more, her eyes were fuzzy. She watched as Kara turned, leaving her in the broken glass and shattered dreams as she walked away. Lena took heaving breathes, her head unable to stay upright, and that was when she saw it. A shrapnel bomb, laced with enough power to explode an armoured door, lying near her on the remains of a shattered shelf. Reaching out for it, she primed it without thinking, before throwing it with the remainder of her strength at Kara’s head, hoping to knock her off balance in one final attempt to strike a wound.

The last thing she remembered was watching Kara pluck it from the air and throw it back towards her without a sound. And the stinging explosion burning and blasting through her left ear, before it all went dark.

And now here she was, living a shadow life in her apartment for the past few weeks as she tried to recover all the final things that Kara had stolen from her. Left to watch as the trail she had been following reached it’s conclusion with corrupted technology that had sent everyone with it near them or in their phones mad and was now tearing the city below apart.

Lena let out another sigh, turning off the TV with a click and walked towards the single remaining picture she had on her coffee table. Picking it up, she stared down at the photo of her and Kara, well over a year ago now, looking happily into the camera.

All lies.

She threw it away.

“Lena.”

Lena’s heart lurched at the soft call, in a voice she could recognise in her dreams and her nightmares without a thought. Half turning, her face hidden in shadows, she looked at Kara dressed as her human persona for once, standing in her living room the way she had weeks before.

Now though she seemed softer, gentler and weaker all at once. Lena wondered why she had come like that, maybe in a display of honest. The situation though lay flat and dead, the echoed anger and pain from their confrontation leaking through the air between them.

She had been honest enough about what she really felt the last time she was here.

Kara stared at her with pleading eyes, and Lena recognised the desperation quickly in her stance.

“I need your help,” Kara sounded out. “Everyone else has been corrupted, and I can’t stop it, not by myself.”

Lena turned now fully, stepping out into the light and allowing Kara to finally see her face.The serum had done what it did best, rapidly healing and evening the skin until it seemed like the scars had plagued her all her life. But even it was beyond fixing it. Half of it covered in deep scars by the bomb, her mouth cut almost through, her ear mangled, her skin stretched and pocketed and her left eye cloudy. The shrapnel from the bomb had torn through her face like it was soft meat. And now, all that was left was calloused, hard and agonisingly painful. 

Kara’s mouth opened with sorrow and shock, but Lena could only feel tired anger in her heart, looking at the woman who had given her as much pain now physically as she had emotionally.

“You don’t deserve my help.”

Kara stared at her, a strange emotion that Lena didn’t recognise filling her eyes before she nodded in acknowledgement of Lena’s words.

“Lena… this city needs us,” she said with a soft and gentle voice. “This isn’t about you… or me. It’s about them.”

Lena didn’t care what the city needed. She didn’t care what they wanted, or anything she had tried to achieve. She didn’t care that it was burning around them. All she cared about was the fog she now existed in, her soul shattered so entirely that she couldn’t recall a single thing about what she really was anymore, and that the person who had done all that was three metres in front of her.

Lena’s face stiffened with pain and hurt, and she shook her head.

“Get out.”

Kara stared at her for a few soft beats before nodding in reply. Without a single backward glance, she hovered gently and flew off into the sky above the sound of fires and shouting in the streets below.

Lena stood stock still, feeling on the verge of collapse and tears when the soft sounds of footsteps behind her. She turned to see Jess, standing still and watching her. Jess, who had been the only one who she always let in. Silent and dependable, who had volunteered without a word or prompting to look after Lena while she recovered. Somehow knowing without Lena saying what she needed, and saying nothing herself.

“If I may, Ms Luthor,” Jess spoke gently. “I’ve seen things working for you, that I’ve never spoken of.”

Lena’s jaw tightened.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Knowing that Jess wouldn’t say anything without it being necessary. That she had already known that Kara was really Supergirl before she had cleaned Lena’s wounds and nursed her with knowledge and skill that had Lena doubting she was really just a secretary.

Jess stepped forward once more until she was standing a few feet away.

“The night of your fight, I checked the systems you had installed in the apartment,” Jess whispered.

Lena frowned, the biometric scanners and state of the art security system she installed running through her mind like a blueprint.

“Ms Danvers may have said all those things and done all she did,” Jess said gently. “But the scans prove that she was under the influence of the tech infection.”

Lena felt her heart shudder and stop in her chest. Forced understanding filling her as she realised what Jess was really saying. Kara had been infected. By the same tech that made good people bad, and bad people worse. That caused anger, hate and fear rise in an inhuman way. 

Lena left out a heavy breath and felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

“I know you’re trying to defend your honour,” Jess continued softly. “But there’s no question… that she didn’t hurt you by her own volition. Her actions and her words were false.”

Lena’s jaw flexed as the emotions that she had been cut off from for over a year, filled her whole body once more. Looking down at the floor, her attention was drawn upwards once more when Jess took another step into her space. Eyes clear and honest.

“I have watched you over the years,” she said firmly. “I have watched you with her and who she helped you become. I’ve loved your vision, I’ve loved your company, and I love you. As your friends love you… as Ms Danvers does.”

Lena felt her lips tremble, and she was unable to stop herself from getting overwhelmed.

And that feeling that had crossed Kara’s face.. the one she didn’t recognise before Jess had said out loud, now became blindingly obvious.

Kara loved her.

**Author's Note:**

> So I really shouldn’t have written this with all the WIP’s I need to update, but I was inspired and ran with it. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! Comment, kudos, subscribe or follow me on Tumblr @assumingminds19
> 
> I'm always down for a chat (that keeps me avoiding my WIP's :D


End file.
